• Prachanda becomes Nepal's New Prime Minister

    Politics
    Prachanda becomes Nepal's New Prime Minister
    According to local media, Prachanda would step down in 2025, allowing the UML to take over the office.

    Digital Desk: After last month's election resulted in a hung parliament, a former Maoist rebel who led a decade-long insurgency against Nepal's Hindu monarchy will take over as prime minister in collaboration with the main opposition, party officials said on Sunday.
     
    Pushpa Kamal Dahal, still known as Prachanda, which means "awful" or "fierce," will lead the new administration for the first half of the five-year term, with the support of the opposition Communist Unified Marxist-Leninist (UML) party and several minor groupings.
     
    According to local media, Prachanda would step down in 2025, allowing the UML to take over the office.
     
    "This is the comprehension. The distribution of critical other roles and ministries need to be sorted out "After a meeting of the new coalition, Dev Gurung, the general secretary of Prachanda's Maoist Centre party, told Reuters.
     
    Prachanda, according to Gurung, would shortly go meet President Bidhya Devi Bhandari to submit his claim for the prime ministership.

    More than a month after the elections, UML general secretary Shankar Pokhrel said the new agreement "has paved the door" for the formation of a new government.

    The new coalition was formed after Prachanda, 68, unexpectedly left the ruling coalition led by Prime Minister Sher Bahadur Deuba of the Nepali Congress party. Deuba refused to support Prachanda for the position of Prime Minister.

    Prachanda's Maoist Centre party gained 32 seats in the House of Representatives, which has 275 members. The UML has 78 members, while the remaining 138 seats will be controlled by minor factions.
     
    Since 2008, when the 239-year-old monarchy was overthrown, Nepal has gone through ten government transitions.